If the slapstick humor of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” developed a sense of bloodlust alongside its overwhelming empathy, it would look a whole lot like Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice.” The fallout of an untimely layoff for a long-tenured paper worker, Lee Byung Hun’s Man-su, provides the premise of a pitch-black comedy as dark as they come. Rather than beat his competition in a tough job market, Man-su decides to eliminate them. He goes from getting the axe to wielding one … along with a gun and any number of other creative weapons.
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This might seem like an absurd escalation of economic anxiety, but within the meticulous milieu satirized by director Park, this pivot from manufacturing to murdering feels eerily natural. It’s entirely in line with local Korean modes of thinking about the bloody and bodily impact of losing employment. “You Americans say to be fired is to be ‘axed,’” Man-su explains in a desperate bid to keep the position he’s held for over a quarter-century. In Korea, he says, it’s “off with your head.” It’s not just a euphemism for the weapon in his work culture. It’s about the decapitation itself.
That deeper sense of dislocation is evident when Man-su attends a support group in the immediate aftermath of his layoff. A smiling instructor offers only vague psychobabble and physical exercises to assure the men of their self-worth and prospects. Rather than assuage Man-su’s fears, it further radicalizes him. When the head honchos of giant corporations offer nothing but platitudes that there is “no other choice” but to sacrifice their laborers at the altar of profits, it only makes sense that workers would eventually apply that ruthless market logic of scarcity to each other.
Man-su is not necessarily lying to his family when he tells them he disappears for long stretches to “difficult job interviews” or that he’s “fighting a war” for them. “No Other Choice” is at its best when it fuses the macabre and the mundane in similar fashions. Director Park expertly fuses genres, navigating deftly between broad satire and taut thriller while always maintaining a grounding in the humanity of his characters. A hearty helping of gallows humor delivered with a marvelously mordant twist by the talented acting ensemble also cuts across both modes of filmmaking.
Yet Park’s screenplay (which also boasts cowriting credits from Don McKellar, Lee Kyoung-mi, and Lee Ja-hye) poses the biggest obstacle to the film feeling as smooth and slick to understand as it is to watch. It’s got a lot of characters to juggle since Man-su does not move down his list of targets in a neatly compartmentalized way like The Bride in “Kill Bill.” He’s keeping many prospects active, ranging from the coping layabout Bummo (Lee Sung-min) to the smiling shoe salesman Sijo (Cha Seung-won), all while negotiating family care with his resilient wife Miri (Son Ye-jin).
The editing prowess of Kim Sang-beom and Kim Ho-bin goes a long way in evening out some of the choppy plot machinations of “No Other Choice.” To some extent, it only makes sense that a story built around such a ludicrous escalation of a common life event does not need to follow ruthless logic. The film boasts some ingenious parallel editing and immaculate match cuts that help to solidify the thematic connections that unite multiple narrative strands.
While “No Other Choice” might be missing some string to connect the pearls, the gems are big and shine brightly. Its centerpiece kill sequences feature some of Park’s most dazzling technical filmmaking spectacles yet. Few working filmmakers have such effortless command over composition and lighting. And building on his fantastic work with cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung on 2022’s “Decision to Leave,” he pushes the visual language of shooting people interacting with technology in even more exciting directions.
Director Park has spoken for decades about his ambitions to adapt Donald Westlake’s novel “The Ax” into “No Other Choice” as his “lifetime project.” Though this perverse and playful project is complete of pleasure, this legend of the Korean New Wave may have set too high a bar for himself in previous films to clear. It may hold some of the best single scenes in his career, but those alone do not make a masterpiece.
Yet there’s one unexpected benefit from all that time spent in development and seeking financing: the world caught up with the nihilistic vision of capitalistic enterprise he displays here. Man-su so desperately wants to be the only one in line for his job. With AI automating so many roles out of existence, the job for which he fights might be the only one left in his factory. [B]
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